


moon river

by fondleeds



Category: One Direction
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Long-Distance Friendship, M/M, ive been unproductive with everything else so heres this, this is short n a little angsty and sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 08:10:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15092693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fondleeds/pseuds/fondleeds
Summary: They were never meant to be two ships passing in the night. They’ve never been like that, and Harry doesn’t want them to ever become those people. Glossing over each other with each visit, slowly drifting further and further apart each time until they’re just specks across a chasm of deep sea.





	moon river

**Author's Note:**

> hii. i saw [this post](http://fondleeds.tumblr.com/post/175339396095/cute-suggestions-concept-its-late-at-night) yesterday and got super sad about it and then decided to avoid uni coursework for a few hours to write this. hope u like. i'll hopefully post some longer plot-heavy zarry soon-ish. ♡

Harry’s not drunk, not even a little, but there’s this heaviness to his head that makes him feel like he’s about to melt back into the sheets. It’s nearing two, the showering rain finally calmed to a soft mist, spritzing the window with tiny drops. The streetlight catches it, creates a monochrome dazzlement of navy blue shapes, dark shadows clinging to the corners of the room, lighter tones brushing almost silver over the crinkles in the blankets and the tips of their noses. 

They’re lying side by side, Harry’s radio ebbing music so gentle under their breathing. Without a sound he lets his head tilt slowly to the side, chin on his shoulder.

Zayn looks like he’s asleep but Harry knows that he isn’t. The corner of his mouth keeps twitching slightly, that little quirk he tries to dampen when he’s remembering something funny, something that makes him happy, and Harry also knows that’s exactly what he’s doing. He knows, because that’s what he’s thinking about, too. 

Happiness. The sun slick on the tarmac where the light caught on the puddles, the rain holding off for them just for a little while, the whole world painted mellow yellow. Smelling Zayn again for the first time in months, stale and sweaty from the flight but still him all the same, that cologne and the shampoo and _him_ , finally close again. Zayn’s nose in Harry’s hair, the warm palm pressed to his back.

Harry flicks his eyes down and dampens his own smile. Fiddles with the bottom of his shirt. Zayn’s shirt.

“I can hear you fidgeting,” Zayn murmurs. His knuckle brushes Harry’s in what Harry assumes was supposed to be a frustrated tap, but their limbs are so slow and the touch is barely even there, just a soft patch of momentary warmth. Harry’s fingers curl up a little all on their own, tiny zaps settling in the tips just from that barely there touch. 

“‘M not fidgeting,” Harry whispers back, just because he can. Because he wants Zayn to look over and make that face, laughter held in cheeks.

“Sure,” Zayn says, opening his eyes. They’re edged silver, lashes wispy steel, and turned to face Harry like this the shadows burrow against his neck and leave the line of his jaw smooth, made for Harry’s palm. He’s smiling, now, that lazy-tired thing, and Harry’s stomach twists just a little, fingers tangling up in loose threads. “You’re gonna ruin my shirt.”

“Already got holes in it,” Harry complains softly, wiggling away with a quiet yelp when Zayn pokes a quick finger through one, right against the soft flesh of Harry’s hip. “ _Don’t_.”

He’s all raspy from their earlier laughter, and Zayn pokes another amused finger, harder now, into Harry’s side, both of them laughing quietly.

“I’ve missed teasing you, Styles,” Zayn says. In the dark his teeth are shined all pearly, and Harry can smell him so much, so close that it hurts his chest a little to tip any closer. 

“I didn’t miss you at all,” Harry says, haughty. “Not one bit.”

“Tell that to my phone,” Zayn says. Harry can feel his cheeks going hot, that prickling sensation crawling up his neck the longer Zayn stares at him like that, smirking but having no idea how much it’s making Harry want to curl closer. Zayn’s just teasing, friends poking fun, and maybe Harry could try harder to read it that way, too.

But it’s been so long, and he thought he was doing a good job of convincing himself during their time apart that he just felt weird about leaving home, that he was too attached, that once the distance finally got to them he’d be fine with the way they are. Here, the two of them alone in Harry’s tiny dorm room with the rest of the world on pause, he knows he’s lying to himself for ever thinking he’d get over somebody like Zayn just like that.

“You’d be lost without my daily updates,” Harry says, softer now. He’s taken too long to say anything and Zayn’s smirk has faded. He’s just watching Harry idly, their hands touching.

“Believe it or not, I actually _don’t_ need to be notified every time the bakery’s run out of your favourite danish,” Zayn says. He shifts as he’s speaking, rolling onto his side. His knuckles brush Harry’s shoulder, and then he presses in, a miniscule shove.

Harry turns, too, knees bumping for an awkward moment before they figure it out, Zayn’s foot brushing between Harry’s calves. Harry curls his fingers gently into the sheets and tries to breathe. They’re so much closer, now, touching here-and-here-and-here, and now the light’s brushing Zayn from behind, hiding his face. All Harry can make out is the soft shine in his eyes, the slope of his nose. He shifts himself down the pillow in the hopes of hiding his own face from the moonlight. Zayn makes him feel so vulnerable sometimes, even if he doesn't mean to.

“You're telling me that doesn't make your day?” Harry says, fake-affronted, enough to make Zayn roll his eyes a little. “That you don't just light right up when you see it's me texting you?”

“You already know the answer to that,” Zayn says. 

_But I want to hear you say it. It's not the same until you say it._

“Whatever,” Harry says, blanking on a witty reply because Zayn’s touched him again, thumb resting delicate on the nub of Harry’s wrist. 

“Maybe if you got up on time you wouldn’t miss out,” Zayn murmurs, cocking a brow. 

“I’m lazy,” Harry says. He cuddles closer into his pillow. “Picked that up from you, didn’t I?”

“ _Hey_. I resent that.”

“You never want to go on morning walks with me,” Harry says. “And now look at me, bed-ridden every day until ten. I’ve lost myself, Z. I don’t know who I _am_ anymore.”

“Shut up,” Zayn laughs, pushing at Harry’s shoulder. Harry just rolls closer now, shoving at Zayn too until they finally settle again. Zayn’s fingers are resting in the cup of Harry’s palm, and each time he shifts the soft drag of it makes Harry’s chest clench up. 

He lets his eyes close, edges of weariness starting to creep in now that he’s on his side. It’s still raining, the sound of it like far away foam from small swells, and each pulse taps his lids shut. He can hear Zayn breathing, and he almost considers holding his own breath just to listen to it a little better, to memorize the pattern exactly so he can match it when he has to be on his own again.

“Walked much around here?” Zayn asks softly. He starts to trace Harry’s palm, from the gap between his thumb and forefinger down to the thin skin of his wrist. Harry takes in a quiet breathe and keeps his eyes closed.

“A bit,” he whispers. “There’s a nice track that follows along the lake.”

“Let’s go there,” Zayn says, and Harry finally blinks his vision back, surprised. “In the morning.”

“Yeah?” Harry hums, heart fluttering a little. Maybe it’s silly, and juvenile, and absurd, but it’s the little things like that, the details, that make him feel the most warm inside. 

“Sure,” Zayn says, nuzzling a little closer and letting out a soft puff of breath as he closes his eyes. “Need to sus the place out, don’t I? Make sure it’s good for you.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say to that. He isn’t sure if the pang in his chest comes from being homesick and missing it all, or from knowing he’s going to miss Zayn once he’s no longer here. 

It’s been three months since he moved, three crazy, stressful, terrifyingly wonderful months, but some days he wakes up and it feels like it’s only been days, struck with the need to call his mum and ask her for help with things he doesn’t really need help with, struck with feeling like maybe he’s made a terrible mistake and he’s going to fail his degree and _God,_ maybe he made the wrong choice, after all.

Some days he wakes up and he goes for a walk because staying in bed thinking about a boy hundreds of miles away won’t ever do him any good.

But now that boy is here, lying just across the sheets. And he’s leaving tomorrow night. Gone again, just like that. 

Harry really never thought it was possible to miss somebody who’s right in front of you, but that’s what this feels like. Needing somebody so much that even their presence in the here and now doesn’t feel like enough. He just wants to know, somehow, someway, that they’ll always see each other again.

“Z?” Harry whispers, because Zayn’s gone suspiciously quiet, hands relaxed between them. It’s so late, he knows, and Zayn’s tired enough as it is from the flight, but the thought of missing a moment awake together is terrifying for reasons Harry doesn’t want to think too hard about. 

“Mm,” Zayn hums, lashes shifting.

The rain is picking up again. Outside, a lone car sweeps down the street, a brief flash of yellow light that jumps in through the window like a spike in a pulse, sudden and bright.

“I really missed you,” Harry admits, the vulnerability of nighttime and tiredness cracking him open, turned inside out like a raw nerve. “Like, so fucking much.”

Zayn finally looks at him again, a slow, sleepy sweep of his lashes as he regards Harry quietly. And, God, the last thing Harry wants is to look–. To look _desperate_ , or to make Zayn feel guilty. That’s not what this is. He can just feel his mood gradually crashing. The peak of joy he felt when he lept into Zayn’s arms this morning has melted, caught on a glint of sun, and the heavy, dark blue bulb that’s below the surface is trying to tilt up and show its face.

For months Harry’s been pinning up pictures on the walls and scrolling aimlessly through his phone and wondering if this is really it, if he’s been destined to just love Zayn forever, from anywhere, any distance, to just have this eternal thudding _ache_ so deep in his chest to be near another person. To hope they might one day feel that way, too.

They were never meant to be two ships passing in the night. They’ve never been like that, and Harry doesn’t want them to ever become those people. Glossing over each other with each visit, slowly drifting further and further apart each time until they’re just specks across a chasm of deep sea.

“Don’t make me cry,” Zayn says, teasing, but Harry can hear it, that tight gruffness to Zayn’s voice that he always puts on when he doesn’t want Harry to see him upset. His eyes are shiny, and Harry knows his own must be like fucking beacons, all that silver moon catching the glint he can feel building, hot and prickling.

“I missed you like I missed my danish this morning,” Harry says, laughing wetly, “coming to pick your sorry arse up from the airport in the rain.”

Zayn’s laughter is a burst, something so bright that reminds Harry of being a boy, of living two houses down from Zayn and picking flowers from the garden and throwing them to him over the fence, of riding their bikes down the hill on the corner and scraping their knees and growing up and gradually calving out these spaces for each other in their chests, little homes to nestle into. 

They laugh for so long, these muffled giggles, and Zayn is still touching Harry’s wrists, brushing the skin of his forearms, these tiny firecracker touches. And, it’s just. It’s so much, and Harry just has to be a little closer, has to let himself tip forward so their foreheads nudge, so dark inside that all Harry has now is touch, smell, wrapped up in the warm aura that Zayn emits, that sunshine on the front porch kind of warm, sunflower seeds and honey and dewy temples.

Zayn’s laughter fades, and then there’s a stillness, Harry staring down at the wet of Zayn’s lip, the softest silver glint caught there, they’re touching here-and-here-and-here and the radio plays _wherever you’re going, i’m going the same_ and their faces are so close, noses bumping, the brush of a cheek, and Harry sucks in a tiny breath and gently, finally, lets himself lean in.

It’s barely a whisper of a touch, but he hears Zayn inhale, feels him tense as their mouths softly brush.

Harry pulls back, this terrible feeling flushing down his entire body like a rush of ice water.

“ _Fuck_ , I’m sorry,” he babbles, too loud in their little bubble. “Z, I–. I didn’t mean to–”

“Harry,” Zayn says, hoarse. His hand finds Harry’s cheek, hot to the touch, then slips back into his hair. “Come here, yeah?”

“I…”

“Sh,” Zayn whispers, and Harry feels it against his bottom lip, this barely there buzz. His entire face feels pink, like each individual peach fuzz hair is sensitive to touch, burning. “Just–. Just come here.”

Their mouths touch again, and it’s molten, soft and melty and cautious, Harry’s bottom lip caught wetly between Zayn’s. He has to let out a shudder of a breath, toes curling up so hard it hurts as Zayn’s fingers gradually start to twist in his hair, pulling him closer. Harry feels out of body, like he can register each touch and press, he can hear the rain tapping light fingers on the window and the low buzz of the radio and the rasp of Zayn’s breathing but it doesn’t feel real. It can’t be real.

“Zayn,” Harry breathes, trying to ground himself. He finds Zayn’s hip, feels brave enough to slip his thumb under his shirt and touch his skin, and it’s like that alone is enough of a spark to catch the bed up in a gulf of flames. Zayn’s fingers curl as he gentles Harry back into the pillows, and it’s wetter, more open, their mouths so lush together. Harry tugs at Zayn’s shirt gently, so overwhelmed his chest feels like it might burst when Zayn brushes at his hair, over and over, this tender touch that before has always been so friendly, but now the comfort of it is new, and that feels amazing, intoxicating, so fucking enlightening, that he’s lucky enough to feel the same touch hundreds of times over but have it be different.

“How long?” Zayn says as they part to breathe, just to breathe, their faces still pressed up close. Zayn is so warm, burning up under Harry’s light touch, the skim of his palms over his back.

“So long,” Harry says thickly, body shifting up when Zayn kisses him firmly, thumb against Harry’s jaw to part his mouth. “So fucking long.”

“I’m sorry,” Zayn breathes past his lips, muffled by another kiss. “‘M so fucking clueless.”

“It’s okay,” Harry hushes him, tries to pull him closer again with a nudge to his hip, but Zayn shakes his head lightly and just stares down at Harry in the dark, fingers in his hair. “Z, it’s okay.”

“Why’d it take you leaving to make me realize I don’t wanna be without you,” Zayn says tightly, shaking his head at himself. “We could have–”

“It’s–. We can’t worry about that now,” Harry says, because he’s spent enough time worrying about it for the both of them. In the now, their mouths both shiny, bodies slotted so warm and close, all Harry wants to think about is this. Them, together, comfortable and close in each other’s company after so long apart. “I don’t want to think about what we should have done. I just want this. You.”

“I’m here,” Zayn whispers, the words lost against Harry’s jaw, wet kisses to his neck, back up to his waiting mouth. They both inhale, feet dragging soft in the sheets as they shift. “I’ve got you, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Harry nods. He smooths his hands up under Zayn’s shirt, and he has to close his eyes at how warm he is, how familiar he smells, how good it feels. Zayn mouths lazily at his jaw, presses a hot palm to Harry’s stomach, his hip, a thumb-print in his thigh.

“Can probably tell you now that I think you’re fucking gorgeous,” Zayn says, shy, this hurt glint to his eyes when he lifts his thumb to Harry’s lip and presses in gently. “And I don’t want to go home.”

“Stay, then,” Harry says, however superfluous a thing to say it may be. “Stay another week.”

“I can’t,” Zayn sighs, sighs right against Harry’s parted mouth. “I have to go home.”

 _Home can be here. Right here with me, that spot in my chest._ Harry can’t say it, he won’t. He isn’t cruel enough to. 

“Then stop talking and kiss me some more,” he says instead, trying for a smile. Zayn blinks down at him, that syrupy grin slowly pulling up at his cheeks, and it’s enough to dissipate the small knot of sadness that’s trying to grow in Harry’s chest, that knowing feeling that it’s going to hurt even more saying goodbye this time than it did the last. 

“Sure,” Zayn says, acting put-on now, drawing a lazy circle against the side of Harry’s hip with light fingers. “If mean, if you really want me to.”

“Think I do,” Harry hums. He runs his thumbs down the sides of Zayn’s spine, tucks them just under the waistband of his pants. Zayn nudges their noses, and it’s such a soft gesture, has Harry melting back a little more into the pillows, urging Zayn to follow him down. “Think you’ve got some lost time to make up for.”

“Oh?” Zayn says, but his indifference is lost in his smile, in the slow, wet kiss he parts Harry’s mouth with. “You think so?”

“Just maybe,” Harry says, and he laughs when Zayn nips gently at his neck, fingers tucking into his sides. “Fucking _stop_. Come here, c’mon.”

“Don’t rush me,” Zayn says softly. He pulls back a little and brushes a wayward curl out of Harry’s eye, suddenly gone all serious. “I don’t want to forget any of this.”

Harry blinks up at him. They stare at each other for a moment, and Harry just lets it rush over him, lets himself go. He tells himself to stop thinking, to stop worrying, to put himself in the here and now; not tomorrow, not when they have to say goodbye, when he knows he’ll cry at the airport and all the way home, when he’ll miss Zayn so much it’ll make his teeth ache. 

Right now he’s got to let himself be happy. Zayn’s mouth twitches, and Harry knows that he’s happy, too.

They’ll work it out. They always do.

  

 

**Author's Note:**

> i made a little post [here](http://fondleeds.tumblr.com/post/175370837055/moon-river-by-fondleeds-they-were-never-meant-to) if u guys wanna rb that and come say hi over on tumblr!! as always thanks for reading, pls let me know what u think ♡♡♡ much much much love


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